Does a video show Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas' Political Bureau, expressing gratitude to Iran for giving Hamas money and weapons after the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023? No, that's not true: The video was made in 2021, and thus predates the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok by @aoos1100 on November 1, 2023, with overlay text (translated from Arabic to English by Lead Stories staff) reading:
Ismail Haniyeh thanks Iran ❤️. Their leader expresses gratitude to Iran publicly.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Dec 4 10:23:50 2023 UTC)
The claim on TikTok was widely shared following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, such as here, here and here.
In the video, Haniyeh says (as translated):
I express my gratitude to those who have supported the courageous Hamas with financial aid and weaponry, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran, which did not hold back from providing Hamas with funds, weapons, and technologies.
Lead Stories conducted a reverse image search on Google Lens (archived here) with an excerpt of the video on December 5, 2023. The results revealed the original video (archived here), which was published on YouTube by Al Jazeera on May 21, 2021. The title (as translated) was: "The first speech by the Chairman of Hamas's political bureau after the ceasefire."
This is what the video looked like on YouTube at the time of writing:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Tue Dec 5 8:30:07 2023 UTC)
In the 24.35-minute-long video published by Al Jazeera, the excerpt where he expresses gratitude to Iran appears between 23.29 and 23.47 marks.
